X-Files Terms of Endearment: how it flips Rosemary's Baby

Terms of Endearment, the seventh episode of The X-Files season 6, gives us Bruce Campbell as a demon who wants nothing more than a normal family, and I think it plays nicely with the fears and horrors around pregnancy. The X-Files, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, follows Mulder and Scully. This episode builds to a final twist, and it's such a cracking way to close things out.

Why X-Files season 6 is the season I watched over and over

Season 6 came straight off the back of the series' first feature film. It first aired back in November 1998, on the 8th, and ran into the new year, ending up as the final season of the millennium. It also pushed the episode count back above 20, with 22 episodes in total.

It was also the first TV box set I ever bought. I didn't use to buy TV box sets, so this was the season I watched over and over again.

Many consider season 6 the point where things started to decline. This is where the ratings began to drop, and they kept falling until the final season of the original run. But I liked it. Most of the criticism was that the standalone episodes leaned more toward humor and stopped going for the scares that dominated so much of the earlier seasons.

Bruce Campbell's Wayne Weinsider and the horned ultrasound

Bruce Campbell plays Wayne Weinsider, a serial bigamist. Because this is The X-Files, there's a twist to that. We begin in Hollis, Virginia, where Wayne and his pregnant wife Laura get the results of their ultrasound. They're shocked to learn the baby has something that looks like horns on its head, and they seem torn up about it.

We learn they've been trying for a baby for a while, and throughout the episode you get the feeling Wayne is desperate for a normal, healthy child. In one scene he tells a parent, "I love kids. I got a baby on the way myself. Seems like I've been trying forever."

There's a lot to relate to in the character. I'm a dad myself, and my wife and I went through a lot while we were trying to have kids. You do worry that something could go wrong.

Laura's nightmare and Mulder's rescued report

Unfortunately, Laura is someone who has to deal with this. That night she has a horrifying nightmare in which a demon appears at the bottom of the bed and pulls out her baby. She wakes to find she's showing signs of a miscarriage.

Everyone thinks she's a bit of a kook except her brother, who happens to be a deputy sheriff. He goes all the way to the X Files and reports the strange things his sister told him. The problem is that Spender is now heading up the X Files, and he immediately shreds the report.

What I love is the cut to Mulder sitting with the report pieced back together. He's decided to help the deputy and his sister, and that puts Wayne under the spotlight. Wayne is revealed to be the demon.

The Rosemary's Baby and Hitchcock nods in Terms of Endearment

A line in the episode, "I saw Rosemary's Baby on cable the other night," is the show hanging a lantern on its inspiration. The creators admitted to wanting to do Rosemary's Baby in reverse. The idea was to show things from the demon's side, along with everything that comes with that.

There's also a moment where Wayne carries a suspicious, glowing glass of milk up to his other wife. That's a nod to the Hitchcock movie Suspicion, in which Cary Grant takes a glass to his wife and the suspicion is that it could be poisoned.

Mandrake, the furnace and Laura's stolen soul

We discover that Laura was drugged with mandrake, which Scully says is used in home abortions. The herb also causes hallucinations and is connected to witchcraft, which hints at what Wayne has been up to.

Wayne tells Laura he destroyed all the evidence and covered for her after she aborted the baby during a trance. The police find the remains of the baby in the outside furnace anyway, and Laura is the one who takes the blame.

When Wayne visits her in jail, she discovers a mark on his neck that she caused while fighting the demon. Wayne then sucks out her soul, which kills her, though paramedics manage to revive her body.

Wayne's second wife Betsy and a trail back to Czechoslovakia

Throughout the episode we learn that Wayne has another wife, Betsy, who's also pregnant. His job lets him take long trips on the road, so he's managed to keep each wife hidden from the other.

Mulder learns this is a pattern. Wayne moves from woman to woman trying to have a baby with each of them. Mulder traces him back to Czechoslovakia, where he went under another name and left a wake of death and destruction.

Why Bruce Campbell makes Wayne more than the bad guy

How I feel about Wayne is complicated. I won't say he's not the villain, but it's clear he isn't setting out to destroy his wives' lives on purpose. "I just want it to be normal," he says. All he wants is a normal family, but he's genetically unable to have one. So he goes through this process over and over, killing his wives and children even when he loves them.

That ties into the title. Terms of Endearment is the name of a book and a film starring Jack Nicholson, and it's about parents and children. Here, the terms are the ones Wayne feels must be met if he's going to continue a marriage with a woman.

Again, I'm not defending him, but I think Bruce Campbell makes him far more three dimensional. He cries at several points, and he's a long way from the conniving devil character we normally get in these stories. Laura didn't deserve what happened to her, though.

A great thing in this episode is that Mulder figures things out instantly and taunts Wayne throughout. He's hilarious, messing with the demon.

Betsy's twist ending in Terms of Endearment

A big twist comes at the midpoint. Betsy's baby also shows irregularities, and that night Wayne goes to take it out. Betsy wakes up in the same situation, but she grabs the demon and asks Wayne what he's doing. It turns out she's fully on board with having a demon baby, and she actually sought Wayne out to have one.

She fakes an attack to pin things on Wayne, then pretends she's also lost the child. When they find Wayne digging in the back garden, the deputy arrives and shoots him. He's placed in hospital next to Laura, which I'm not sure is the right thing to do. With his dying breath, Laura's soul is released from his body and returns to its rightful owner.

That's not the end. Mulder and Scully find several normal baby corpses buried in the back. Betsy had been killing her children because they were normal, the exact opposite of Wayne. She's a demon too, but she couldn't have a demon child with regular men. So she went after Wayne, got pregnant, framed him to have him killed, and even stole his car.

The episode ends with her driving off with a child beside her. It's such a great way to close things out, and I'll always remember them playing I'm Only Happy When It Rains over that final scene.

The late rewrite and the real life killer behind Betsy

The twist was something they thought of late in the game. Originally, Wayne was simply going to move from woman to woman. They felt that got repetitive and decided the final woman should be revealed as a demon.

Things hit a snag while they were setting up the final shot, when the baby's mother got cold feet. She was a devout Catholic and didn't want her baby portrayed as a demon. She pulled out, and the team had to scramble for a replacement.

I do think there might be some people who struggle with this episode, and I'm surprised it wasn't more controversial, especially since abortion is such a big part of it. It's too long ago for me to remember the discussion at the time, but I do remember the episode Home being banned, whereas in my mind this one didn't get as much backlash, even with all the dead babies.

Betsy is also apparently based on a real life serial killer who killed three of her 12 children. She's also suspected of killing a fourth, though that disappearance was never fully connected to her. It's a great reveal, and I think the episode plays nicely with the fears and horrors around pregnancy before taking things to the next level.